Wednesday, July 13, 2005

I woke up on Monday morning with pretty poor vision. Not the worst eyesight out there, but I definitely needed to wear glasses or contacts as a result of some rather nasty astigmatisms in both peepers.

I walked into a clinic on Monday afternoon for a fairly harmless ten-minute procedure, where a doctor gave me the A Clockwork Orange eyes-forced-open treatment and shot a "laser" through each of my lamps to correct these optimo-problems as I lovingly clutched a stuffed hippo to my chest.

I woke up on Tuesday morning with better vision than most of you mere mortals. In fact, I was reading 20/20 on that annoying lettered chart not 24 hours after surgery. Ahh, the wonders of technology. I'm the anti-Thomas Dolby: They un-blinded me with science.

LASIK...I mean, seriously, what will they think of next? I'm impressed. These scienticians or whoever they are really did some good work.

For anyone contemplating the surgery, take some advice from Nike and Maury Finkel: (Just) do it. It's remarkable, it's incredible, and truthfully, I still can't believe the effects. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to awake from nightly slumber and be able to see the television clearly. Now I know it's great. I couldn't envision what it would be like to look in the mirror and see an unspectacled Ace. Now I know I look handsome and debonair. It's awesome, I can even see things like street signs and addresses from more than five feet away.

And aside from the time I moved my head at the exact time the laser was about to pierce my left cornea, the surgery was a piece of cake. Sure, there's some minor discomfort, and they jab some shit in your eye that's not cool, but you're in and out in 10-20 minutes. Here's the rub: Everyone told me, "You'll be completely fine by the next morning," but nobody told me that for the next four to six hours I'd feel like someone threw Fuji dust or buckets of sand in my ojos or like I'd been swimming in raw sewage (and I don't love it).

So after the numbing agent wears off, make sure to get yourself a valium, a Tylenol PM or drink a pint of Benadryl. I couldn't fall alseep in that kind of stinging pain, so I went from really psyched about the surgery to really pissed at myself in a short period of time. But by about the time Bobby Abreu won the Homerun Derby title, the pain started to cease and my eyes started to open a bit. I can see! I can really see perfectly! My smile came back instantly.

And when I woke up the next day and tore those doc-issued Kurt Rambis shields off my face, I felt truly bionic. I have a feeling of sheer joy enveloping me today, and I'm not sure how quickly this is going to fade. Sure, there are some trivial annoyances I have to put up with this week, like eyedrops and night shields and no eye-rubbing and all that, but it's all worth it. And you can't swim for a week or two, but like Corky says, there ain't no swimmin' in my show.

The Ace Cowboy can see perfectly, without glasses or contacts. And there ain't no stoppin' me now.